Phillies 3, Reds 2: Aroldis Chapman is usually automatic. But he surrendered back-to-back bombs to the murderers row that is Erik Kratz and Freddy Galvis as the Philly walked off Cincinnati. Heck, the inning started with Chapman walking Delmon Young on four straight pitches, so you know he wasn’t on it yesterday. And Cliff Lee probably needs to buy Galvis dinner: Lees pinch ran for Young and was caught stealing. If he hadn’t, Kratz’s homer wold have been enough. Galvis saved his bacon.

Cardinals 4, Brewers 2: The Cardinals beat old friend Kyle Lohse for the third straight time. After the game said “Baseball is a stupid game. Baseball is weird, man.” They should have sent a poet.

Rangers 11, Tigers 8: Three homers, five driven in and a 4 for 4 night for Miguel Cabrera are still not enough for the Tigers to beat Texas. The Rangers rapped 18 hits, scoring five runs of Doug Fister and six off the bullpen. Four driven in for David Murphy. I was back and forth into this game all evening as I did and watched other things. It seemed to last eleventeen hours.

Pirates 1, Astros 0: Jeff Locke shut out the Astros for seven innings. A solo shot from Pedro Alvarez in the fifth was all Pittsburgh needed. This one was the anti-Tigers-Rangers game, as it was done in a cool two hours and twenty-four minutes.

Rays 3, Orioles 1: I knew Matt Moore had pitched a great game the moment I learned that my girlfriend inadvertently left him on the bench on her fantasy team. There was much cursing and such. Moore’s seven strong innings ups him to 8-0 on the year.

Mets 4, Cubs 3: When I was writing the Rangers recap I accidentally wrote “Daniel Murphy” instead of “David Murphy.” I would have likely left that mistake up there had I not looked at the box score of this one and been reminded that Daniel plays for the Mets and David for Texas. I think I’ve made that mistake a half dozen times in the past couple of years. Anyway, here Daniel batted leadoff and hit the tie-breaking homer in the eighth. The Mets won their first series at Wrigley in six years.

Rockies 5, Giants 0: Barry Zito being relatively good recently has probably made some forget how much of a disaster he was for several years. Putting him in Coors Field is a helpful reminder. Zito was touched for five runs on 11 hits in five and two-thirds. The Giants have lost five of six. Their rotation has gotten bombed lately and now has the third worst rotation ERA in the NL.

Padres 13, Nationals 4: Speaking of beat up starters, Dan Haren surrendered seven runs in five innings and overall the Padres did a Gashouse Gorillas conga line around the bases against Nats pitching getting the series split.

Braves 5, Dodgers 2: This game featured two hours of rain delays and the Dodgers bullpen failing to hold a lead for Matt Magill, who allowed only one unearned run in five innings. Atlanta didn’t hit a homer, which is kinda rare for them in a win.

Athletics 4, Royals 3: The Royals skid continues — they’ve lost ten of their last thirteen games and have sunk back to .500 — as Oakland sweeps ’em. Yoenis Cespedes singled and scored and hit a homer.

Angels 6, White Sox 2: Jake Peavy walked guys with the bases loaded twice. He walked five in all and allowed four runs on four hits. Which is weird because when you see a guy walk the bases loaded once, let along twice, it feels like he’s giving up, like, a dozen runs no matter what. Or maybe that’s just some weird hangup of mine about bases loaded walks.

Blue Jays vs. Yankees: POSTPONED: All at sea again. And now my hurricanes have brought down this ocean rain. To bathe me again. My ship’s a sail. Can you hear its tender frame? Screaming from beneath the waves. Screaming from beneath the waves. All hands on deck at dawn. Sailing to sadder shores. Your port in my heavy storms. Harbours the blackest thoughts. I’m at sea again. And now your hurricanes have brought down this ocean rain.

The Good Reecky, peetching like he really, really wants to be someplace else, made the gritty Diamondbacks look more like the surface of a hockey rink than the sheet of parakeet paper for which they’d rather be mistaken. Marcell “the hammer” Ozuna supplied the offense with a booming double to drive in Juan “Cabeza del Cachihuate Viejo” Pierre and Derek Dietrich. And the Feesh fell into a tie again – yawn – with the Astros for worst record in baseball and baseball-like diversions. Trying to recognize the Feesh when they’re not on a losing streak is like trying to recognize your go-to girl when she’s sober.

In other news, there is no other news. They say that Tweeter may impend, but is that…news? It’s Monday, and the uniformed zombie apocalypse known as the Feelies are coming to town. The Fates who rule the baseball schedule seem determined to keep putting beatable teams in the way of the Feesh – irony, beeter as a lemon rind. Let the other news begin!

“watch his dinger”. Maybe I’ve heard too much of my son’s 7th grade humor, but it sounds like there’s an innuendo joke in there trying to bust out. In my head I hear Chuck Berry singing “My Ding-a-ling”.

I dunno that I’d say Kratz is a ‘light hitter’. His career slugging is over .400 and in < 275 AB he's got 24 extra base hits (12 doubles and 12 homers). He doesn't hit often, but when he does, they're boomers.

“Well, everyone would gather — on the twenty-fourth of May — sitting in the sand to watch the fireworks display”

janessa31888 - May 20, 2013 at 7:02 AM

Michael Brantley was great yesterday, including a three run homer off of King Felix. Great alert baserunning by Mike Aviles and Michael Bourn. Mike, Mike, and Mike! The Indians have now beaten seven Cy Young winners this season. I’m going to enjoy this however long it lasts. We have so much more grit this year. 😉

Boy rough couple weeks for the royals. Frenchy and moose have to go. We will need to trade for a bat and we need to do it soon or we could be dead and buried in the standings. Come on Mr Moore if ur all in for the next 2 yrs its time to mortgage the future to get the hitter or hitters necessary to win.

There was a really interesting exchange between Phil Coke and Miggy in the bottom of the second. After the immortal Leonys Martin greeted the reverse closer with a double, Leury Garcia laid down a sac bunt to try and move Martin to third. The bunt was laid down between third base and pitcher, but closer to the mound, and a little too quick for a sac and too slow if it had been meant as a hit. Miggy crept in when he shouldn’t have, and Coke lobbed the ball at third to try to get the lead runner. Miggy was out of position for that, and snagged the ball with his bare hand, everyone safe. Once Miggy erred by coming in and then not racing to 3rd, Coke also erred by throwing to 3rd when he had time to get Garcia at 1st.

Coke started giving Miggy the complete David Wells treatment, and the ESPN cameras kept focusing on Miggy, who looked absolutely crestfallen and miserable. It was almost childlike and touching how sad he looked.

And of course, Phil Coke made himself more Phil Coke-ish. Loutish and ineffective is no way to keep a job, no matter how left handed you are.

In fairness, you need to add that Coke had reason to be annoyed on the previous play too when the left fielder misplayed that double, which should have only been a single. As for getting more upset after the misplayed bunt…the next play had the shortstop throwing out the runner at first instead of taking the force at second when he had more than enough time to do so. On the play after that the left fielder made a bad throw home as well. No errors, but that was some poor defense going on.

Fair enough, but that will happen when you have a team full of DH’s. And Phil Coke is still a terrible pitcher, no amount of defense could save that boy.

RoyHobbs39 - May 20, 2013 at 9:56 AM

You mentioned putting Zito in Coors. I think it is a matter of putting him anywhere outside San Fran. Check out his home and away splits this year. He has always done a little better at home, but this year it is not even close.

How often do you see a team score 8 runs over 3 games and win all three? Only when the opposition scores 5, like KC did over the weekend in Oakland. My theory is when the weather is just too pretty, visiting teams get distracted, like David Lough in the 7th, when he took his eye off Derek Norris’ sharp single and the ball flew right past his glove like a comet past the earth. Norris runs well-for a catcher-and he still made 3rd easily, then scored on a Crisp SF to tie the game. Cespedes’ HR in the 8th seemed almost foregone after that error.

KC is truly “mired” at this moment. Griffin left a ton of stuff up in the zone, and somehow escaped with only 3 ER in 6 IP. He was throwing 88-90 and his change was 82-84, not that much of a spread, so KC had him timed, they just couldn’t square up enough with RISP. Again my theory, just too pretty yesterday, and the snoring from the napping crowd must have lulled them just a fraction. Of course the A’s are used to 75 and sunny, with a light northerly breeze, and the low murmur of 20,000 gently snoring fans. The afternoon sun and about a gajillion ppm of pollen will do that.

I love Gatsby but must confess a preference for his short stories. He was one of the finest American prose stylists of all time, and I approve his penchant for women neurotic to a fault.

On the other hand, through a chronosynclastic infundibulum’s worth of circumstance and irony he was invested as the “novelist of the jazz age” when anybody with a tenth grade music appreciation courses’ worth of information could tell you that he neither understood nor appreciated jazz even slightly, nor could he even distinguish it from the kitschiest popular big band music. There was a biographical film about him called Beloved Infidel, which stinks on its own terms but is a great example of the classic Hollywood hagiographical drama.